


Fire, Fire

by sonatinata



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-10
Updated: 2012-07-10
Packaged: 2017-11-09 13:26:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonatinata/pseuds/sonatinata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Ventus and Vanitas's birthday and they're in the middle of the forest with a Wendigo, a salt circle that may not be salt, and two strange hunters. What could possibly go wrong? A Kingdom Hearts Supernatural AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire, Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [artenon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/artenon/gifts).



It was past seven at night, which officially meant that Ventus and Vanitas had spent over twelve hours wandering through the mountainside looking for the creature that had decimated a campsite and taken all the campers.

 

Ven was all for taking out the monster and ensuring the safety of all future campers and all that, but really, walking around at night when the creature was supposed to be more active was a spectacularly stupid idea.

  
"I really, really think we should set up camp now," Ven said, looking into the darkened patches of forest with increasing trepidation.

  
"Don't be stupid," Vanitas replied, resolutely moving forward and not looking in Ven's direction. "Night's when the beasts come hunting."

  
"Which is exactly why we should set up camp!" Ven said as he inwardly fumed at his twin's passion for running straight toward cannibalistic beasts that would love nothing more than to slowly eat them alive.

  
"Don't be a wimp," Vanitas said, waving his flashlight at the trees. "We do more dangerous shit than this all the time."

  
"Yeah, but not on our birthday!" Ven said, as if it explained everything.

  
Vanitas halted in front of him and Ven promptly walked into his back.

  
"Mmph?" Ven inquired.

  
Vanitas poked his spikes with his flashlight. "I forgot about that."

  
"What?" Ven squawked. "How do you forget about—"

  
"To make it up to you," Vanitas said loudly, "we can set up your pansy-ass camp now. Happy birthday."

  
"You just. What." Ven threw his hands up in the air. "I give up."

  
"That's the spirit," Vanitas said, slapping his twin's back. He reached into his pack and pulled out a white and pink package. "Well, you go ahead and pitch the tent while I encircle us in sugar."

  
"Salt."

  
Vanitas stared at the package in his hand before hiding it behind his back. "That's what I meant."

  
Ven was pretty sure the expression on his face was vaguely homicidal, but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Vanitas, tell me that you are holding a package of salt in your hand and not a package of sugar."

  
"I am holding a package of salt in my hand and not a package of sugar."

  
Ven fumed.

  
Vanitas looked at his twin's face and rolled his eyes. "Relax, Ven. How many times have we done this again?"

  
"A lot," Ven answered through gritted teeth as he began setting up the tent.

  
"Exactly, a lot," Vanitas nodded. "Now remind me, how many times out of that 'a lot' have we been killed by rampaging monsters?"

  
"Well, you've never accidentally brought along sugar instead of salt, either!" Ven argued.

  
"Actually, you packed all this shit," Vanitas reminded him, nudging the pack with a toe. "All I need is this baby," he said, caressing the gun nestled in his thigh holster.

  
Ven scowled at it, then at his brother. "I would not pack sugar."

  
"I never said it was sugar," Vanitas pointed out. "Actually, if I remember right, I'm pretty sure I clearly said that it was salt."

  
"You better hope it's salt," Ven said, then proceeded to mutter death threats under his breath as Vanitas opened the package and poured a wide circle around their campsite.

  
"You know, I'd be more afraid of you if you could shoot better than a five-year-old Sora with a water gun. Which, by the way, you can't."

  
Ven frowned at him as he closed the package of sugar—salt—whatever and put it back in the bag.. "Sora didn't even know how to use a water gun when he was five."

  
"Proving my point."

  
"Whatever," Ven muttered, thwapping the tent. "Tent, done. Who's going to get firewood?"

  
"Um, nobody?" Vanitas stared at him as if he were the dumb one, which Ven took great offense to.

  
"Why not?" he asked as calmly as possible.

  
"You were the one freaking out about monsters eating you in the first place, wimp," Vanitas said, rolling his eyes. "Now you want to send them smoke signals?"

  
"Well I don't want to freeze to death," Ven griped. "Plus, the _salt_ circle's supposed to keep them out, whether we have a campfire or not. Or, you know, it would, if it were _actually made of salt._ "

  
"Shut up, it's salt. And if you want wood, you go get wood. I'll stay here and protect your tampons."

  
"Protect my what?" Ven demanded, then held his hand up. "Never mind. No. I don't want to know. I'm getting wood."

  
"Don't get eaten!" Vanitas said, waving.

  
"'Don't get eaten,'" Ven mocked in a high-pitched tone as he hopped over the sugar-salt line of the campsite and into the forest. He glanced around the dark creepiness once before pulling out his pistol and clutching it in his right hand. Better safe than sorry.

  
He had six pieces of fantastic, beautiful firewood bundled up on his right arm when he heard the sharp snap of a twig and a menacing growl. He threw all the wood he was holding to the ground and ran for the campsite, tripping over only two branches on the way.

  
"Vani... Van," he panted, out of breath.

  
Vanitas looked up from his copy of _Eat, Pray, Love_. "Where's the firewood?"

  
"Are you... not won... wondering why I just... ran here?" Ven demanded with as much annoyance as he could when he was that out of breath.

  
To Ven's eternal aggravation, Vanitas simply shrugged. "Should I be?"

  
"There is something in that forest," Ven said, pointing behind him.

  
"Um. Duh? I don't know if you've noticed, but we're kind of hunting it."

  
"There's a difference between us coming for it and it coming for us. Which it happens to be doing!" Ven said, hand still outstretched.

  
Vanitas peered over Ven's shoulder and there were several long, cricket-chirpy moments of Ven pointing into dark, creepy forest and Vanitas wordlessly staring at the area.

  
"Right," Vanitas said, turning back to his book.

  
"No, really, it's coming! I heard it!"

  
"Mmhm."

  
As Ven tried to figure out how to convince Vanitas that he better start paying attention or they would all die, there was another sharp snap and a low rumbling sound.

  
"You heard that, right?" Ven whispered.

  
"Bear," Vanitas said, not looking up.

  
"That was not a bear!" Ven said, diving for the pack and extracting the white package. A mutated, shadowy figure emerged from the trees and he promptly threw half of the package in the creature's face.

  
Instead of screaming and running in terror, the creature made a spatting sound and got closer.

  
"What the—is this _sugar_?" it asked, and now that it was closer to the light, Ven could see that the "monster" was actually two men, one with flaming red spikes for hair and green eyes and one with long, light blue hair and green eyes. The redhead was the one who had spoken; the bluenette (bluehead?) simply looked bored.

  
"Who are you?" Ven asked.

  
"Forest rangers," the redhead said, shifting his abnormally large backpack. "Haven't you guys heard about the bear attacks up here? It's not the safest time to be camping out."

  
Ven shrugged. "We'll be fine. Why are rangers in the forest this late at night?"

  
"They're not rangers."

  
Ven turned and saw that Vanitas's face was still buried in his book. "How do you know that? You didn't even look at them."

  
"I kinda did look at them, thanks," Vanitas said, looking up and rolling his eyes. "And I also looked at the pictures of all the rangers they so nicely put on the wall in the cabin. Pretty sure I would've remembered seeing Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dumber."

  
"Maybe they just didn't put our pictures up yet; ever think of that?" the redhead asked. "And besides, what else would we be?"

  
"Hunters."

  
Ven stared at the two newcomers. The redhead had on his back a large (very large) black backpack with what looked like a large (very large) silver thermos on the side. The bluenettehead was carrying a black sack. Neither of them were wearing holsters (which didn't mean much, really, seeing as Ven himself didn't have a holster) but nothing about them really screamed "hunter."

  
Ven said as much to Vanitas, who let out a long-suffering sigh.

  
"No one in their right minds would be in the mountains the same week as a bloody, gory murder and the disappearance of five guys in one night unless they were hunters. It's not that hard to figure out."

  
Ven's indignant reaction to Vanitas' insult to his intelligence was interrupted by the bluenettehead asking, "Does this mean you are hunters, as well?"

  
"Got it in one," Vanitas said cheerfully. "As a reward, you can go away and find your own campsite."

  
"Well excuse us for trying to keep you greenies from being eaten by a Wendigo," the redhead said, rolling his eyes.

  
"Thanks, but no thanks. We got this," Vanitas said.

  
"As evidenced by the sugar," the bluenettehead said, poking at the circle of white grains with his toe.

  
"It _was_ sugar!" Ven exclaimed, betrayed. He turned to Vanitas. "You lied to me!"

  
"Not really," Vanitas shrugged. "I just did what you said. Anyways, we don't need a salt circle."

  
"We do if we want to sleep!"

  
"Sleeping is for the weak."

  
"Girls, girls, let's just calm down," the redhead said, stepping closer. "Obviously you're way too inexperienced to be hunting this kind of thing, so here's what we're gonna do. Isa and I are going to stay here with you until morning, just to make sure you guys don't die or anything, and then you'll hike your merry way back down the mountain and we'll kill the evil monster. Got it memorized?"

  
"Like we need your help," Vanitas said.

  
"You don't even have a fire," the redhead pointed out. "You need some experienced help, which we are very graciously offering."

  
"Yes, Lea, thank you for speaking for me," the bluenettehead, Isa, said.

  
"You're not going to let the kiddies get eaten, are you?" Lea asked, eyes wide in false innocence. "They obviously need our expertise to survive."

  
"What could you offer? Aside from your lack of morals and good graces, that is," Isa said.

  
"I have morals and good graces!"

  
"Which is why you are preying on people who actually remembered to pack food."

  
"You just want our food?" Ven demanded.

  
Lea gave Ven a wounded look. "Don't listen to Isa, he's just being rude. I do want to help you guys survive the night. I wouldn't mind a bit of food, though. Haven't eaten since breakfast."

  
Vanitas threw a sweet roll at Lea's head. "There you go. Happy camping. We don't want you here."

  
"I think we should help them," Ven said.

  
"No, we help you, remember?" Lea said.

  
Vanitas ignored the redhead. "Are you dumb? We don't have enough to share with two other people."

  
"Yes we do," Ven argued. "Remember, Terra and Aqua were planning to come with us before they got called about the other case? I think we have their extra food still."

  
"Okay but these weirdos—" Vanitas threw his hand out in a sweeping gesture meant to refer to both Lea and Isa "-are not our problem."

  
"Though I do not agree with Lea's motives, four hunters stand a better chance than two of surviving in these mountains," Isa said.

  
Lea nodded emphatically, and there was a loud growling sound.

  
"Wow, you really are hungry, aren't you?" Ven asked.

  
Lea paused. "Well, I am hungry, but that wasn't me."

  
There was a moment of silence.

  
"Holy shit Wendigo!" Vanitas yelled, then pulled out his gun from his precious baby thigh holster and fired three shots in quick succession at the creature in the trees.

  
The creature made a growling sound but was otherwise unaffected by the bullets—not that Ven expected them to be super effective. He drew out his own gun and fired, his bullets igniting on contact and causing the Wendigo to howl in pain.

  
"Why aren't your bullets incendiary?" he shouted over the noise.

  
"I forgot about that," Vanitas yelled back before launching a Molotov cocktail that satisfyingly blew up in the monster's face and made several trees catch on fire.

  
"Aqua's going to kill us," Ven moaned.

  
"Hey, Isa, hold the kiddies back, will you?" Ven heard Lea shout.

  
Isa slipped his dagger back in his sleeve before walking over to Ven and Vanitas and dragging them backwards, away from Lea and the Wendigo.

  
"What the hell are you doing?" Vanitas demanded.

  
"I'm showing you the real way to take out a Wendigo," Lea said, a manic glint in his eyes. "Watch and learn, kiddos."

  
He pulled out the thermos from the side of his backpack, which actually turned out to be a tube connected to the backpack. He uncapped it and pointed the open, connected end at the Wendigo. Ven was completely confused, but then Lea reached back and hit the side of his pack and—

  
Oh.

  
"Is that a fucking flamethrower?" Vanitas demanded.

  
"Pretty sure," Ven said, staring. There was probably a button on the side or something, because the second Lea had hit it, flames began pouring out of the thermos, enveloping the Wendigo and the nearby forestry.

  
"Lea has a bit of an obsession with fire," Isa said loudly, which was probably an understatement because the only reason Isa was raising his voice in the first place was so he could be heard over Lea's maniacal laughter. "It comes in handy sometimes."

  
"I think the Wendigo's dead now," Ven said weakly as he watched the trees go up in flames.

  
"You can go tell him that, if you wish," Isa said.

  
"That's right, burn! Burn!" Lea cackled.

  
Ven shifted uneasily. "No, thanks."

  
"I wouldn't either," Isa said, looking at him in a way that was probably meant to be comforting but turned out to be vaguely terrifying. "Sweet roll?" he asked, offering the bread Vanitas had thrown at Lea.

  
"Okay. Thanks."

  
"Ven. Ven," Vanitas grabbed Ven's arm, eyes wide and staring at Lea and the flamethrower. "I know what I want for my birthday."

  
Ven sighed and bit down on the roll.

  
This was the worst birthday ever.

**Author's Note:**

> What didn’t make it (that I wrote down):
> 
> 1\. Once, Vanitas lost his thigh holster and he was positive that, in some strange fit of jealousy, Ven had stolen it. Ven was death-glared at for a week until Vanitas found it under the car seat.
> 
> 2\. Aqua and Terra, both insane nature-lovers, gave Ven and Vanitas a thorough lecture for starting a forest fire and made them both sit through hours of Smokey the Bear wildfire prevention animations.


End file.
